At the height of the infamous Bodyline series in 1932-33, the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket sent the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the home of Lord’s, a cablegram:

Bodyline bowling assumed such proportions as to menace best interests of game, making protection of body by batsmen the main consideration. Causing intensely bitter feeling between players, as well as injury. In our opinion is unsportsmanlike. Unless stopped at once, likely to upset friendly relations between Australia and England.

It sent Lord’s into a paroxysm of anger. An offended and outraged MCC Committee replied in the highest of dudgeons:

We, Marylebone Cricket Club, deplore your cable. We deprecate your opinion that there has been unsportsmanlike play. We have fullest confidence in captain, team, and managers and are convinced they would do nothing to infringe either the Laws of Cricket or the spirit of the game. We have no evidence that our confidence is misplaced… If the Australian Board of Control wish to propose a new law or rule, it shall receive our careful consideration in due course. We hope the situation is not now as serious as your cable would seem to indicate, but if it is such as to jeopardise the good relations between English and Australian cricketers, and you would consider it desirable to cancel remainder of programme, we would consent with great reluctance.

The on-field incidents in Adelaide that caused this extraordinary exchange involved Australian captain, Bill Woodhull, and wicketkeeper, Bert Oldfield, being struck and injured by English fast bowlers hurling down a barrage of ‘leg theory’ short-pitched bowling directed at the batsmen’s bodies.

‘There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket and the other is not,’ Woodfull said angrily to England manager and former England captain Sir Pelham Warner.

In both England and Australia, dressing-room acrimony extended into political and economic relations between the mother country and her dominion which were already strained by the Bank of England’s determination to subjugate Australia’s Depression-ravaged economy, already brought to its knees with 25 per cent of its workforce unemployed, by insisting that the young country prioritise the honouring of its heavy debts to Britain. 

Only intense diplomatic wrangling persuaded the Australian board to withdraw its accusation of unsportsmanlike behaviour to allow the MCC tour and Test series to continue. Ninety years on, the episode still resounds in Australian folklore as a milestone on the road to full nationhood.

The 1933 MCC-Australia exchange came to mind this week in the furore that erupted in both countries after Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey caught his opposite number Jonny Bairstow out of his ground at Lord’s in circumstances that, to put it mildly, sent even the most staid of MCC members into a Long Room tizz. If left to them and the media in both England and Australia, 21st-century versions of the 1933 cables would have sizzled across the world, but in the opposite direction. 

When England captain Ben Stokes, in white-hot anger, heroically batted England to within a whisker of an unlikely victory in an inning for the ages, he effectively echoed Woodfull’s furious declaration to Warner, adding so much aggrieved fuel to the fire that it’s become a minor international incident. 

A 10 Downing Street spokesman said, ‘The Prime Minister agrees with Ben Stokes, and he said he simply wouldn’t want to win a game in the manner Australia did. The game did provide an opportunity to see Ben Stokes at his best, and it was an incredible Test match, and he has confidence England will bounce back at Headingley.’

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unwisely took the bait from his British counterpart and tweeted, ‘Same old Aussies – always winning!’ appropriating the chant of England supporters – and the Long Room – ‘Same old Aussies, always cheating.’

‘Australia is right behind Alyssa Healy (Australian women’s captain, also playing England), Pat Cummins, and their teams and look forward to welcoming them home victorious,’ Albanese added crassly. Even more crassly, Albanese warned Sunak to ‘stay in his crease’.

What silliness all around. Unlike Bodyline, where the intimidatory fast bowling underpinning it could cause potentially life-threatening injury in the days before helmets and body padding, nobody was hurt at Lord’s. Bairstow foolishly meandered out of his crease before the over was called, and the ball was dead: that was it. He had done it before in that very over and, earlier in the Test, attempted something similar himself against Australian batsman Marnus Labuschagne.

Bairstow was bang to rights, as the umpires called it, and the dismissal was legal. But Cummins should have seen the bigger picture for his team’s post-Sandpapergate reputation and for the game of cricket itself which, as Australia captain, he is a custodian. He should have called Bairstow back but didn’t. His was a foolishness of a different nature, however much he has sought to downplay it or even later laugh it off.

But the vitriol, invective, nastiness, and war of words that has erupted between Australia and England reaching the highest level of government? Please.

Had Stokes prolonged his magnificent innings just a little longer, winning his side a victory eclipsing even his Headingley heroics of 2019, the matter would have been closed. He would have the laurels, and Cummins would be ruing the consequences of his decision to uphold Bairstow’s unusual dismissal when the match cards were so strongly stacked in his favour.

Elevating this episode to a spat between prime ministers, with aspersions cast on the characters of both countries, is absurd. In a world where war and recession stalk the West there are far more important things for Sunak and Albanese to worry about. Where’s their sense of proportion?

After Bodyline was used in England against the West Indies in 1934, Wisden wrote, ‘Most of those watching it for the first time must have come to the conclusion that, while strictly within the law, it was not nice.’ The same can be said of the Bairstow incident.

As for resolving it, the MCC should remind the members who vented their anger at the Australians in the Long Room in such an unseemly manner that the MCC remains the custodian of the Laws of Cricket. Given the situation was unclear last Sunday when Carey broke Bairstow’s wicket, the club should soberly remember the advice it gave the Australian Board of Control in its 1933 cable: if the MCC wishes to propose a new law or rule, it shall receive its own careful consideration in due course.

As for the prime ministers and other politicians who have waded in to this unseemly international slanging match, they should get a grip, take a chill pill, and just get on with what really matters beyond the boundary.